Wednesday, August 31, 2005

How to prevent varicose veins : and the wobbles.

How to prevent varicose veins:

Glue a one cm thick half-tube to the bottom of the shoe-sole in a straight line from heel to toe .

Logic:This forces a mild equivalent of walking across an uneven surface . A typical foot is about 4 cm in width . A one cm ridge in the middle will give an angle between the sole and the shin of about 12 degrees . This is sufficient to pump blood back and prevent pooling .

Proof : Bushmen do not have varicose veins . It is not just the even walking (ie rocking back and forth ) , it is also the side-to-side rocking .

Try it yourself : Angle your foot at 45 degrees between the breadth and the shinbone . (As if you are twisting your ankle :ie side-to-side.) This feels uncomfortable , but you can do it . Now halve the angle to 24 degrees . This feels better , but there is still a degree of discomfort . Now halve it again to about 12 degrees . There is no discomfort .Now twist your feet from -12 to +12 degrees repeatedly . You will feel an endorphin effect as stress on the lymph-vascular system is alleviated .

The same effect can be achieved by sitting , putting your feet firmly on the floor and moving your thighs together and apart repeatedly . The soles have to remain parallel to the ground .

I have observed this behaviour in a variety of social situations , but ascribed it to a form of public masturbation . It bothered me that there did not seem to be the normal penalties attached to this behaviour .

There seems to be social acceptance for this type of stress-relief , but only if soles are parallel with the ground . ( Try it yourself) .

Indeed , your body needs a mild uneven floor to pump the blood and lymph fluids back up against gravity .

The argument : if muscular and mechanical contractions in the lower limbs in an active hominid does some of the work of the heart against gravity , no extra capability of the heart will evolve to compensate for these rocking and twisting actions as the hominid starts walking upright (why should it ? )

Existing Varicose Veins

Do the above . This will prevent the worsening of the present condition .

Take Human Growth Hormone (HGH).

The evolutionary argument is that the legs are most susceptible to HGH . Note that humans age from the face downwards : wrinkles , sagging breasts , softening gut muscles , but the thigh muscles remain firm .If you are over 40 , HGH has flattened out at below maintenance levels . While the real mccoy is expensive and has bad side-effects , a secretagogogue is available (Solal.com)

Trying the above has very little down-side .

I am personally going to try the one cm strip down the sole of the shoe and see what happens .

From evidence of fossilized footprints in the Olduvai , humans started to walk upright at least 4 million years ago. Other major evolutionary changes like nostril-hairs (for smoke particles) , flattened nozzles (for shorter tongue , thus more rapid , intelligible speech) , conic breasts ( to prevent babies with flattened nozzles from being smothered in the mother’s clutch) evolved after that , (and quite rapidly too) .

So , the human skeleton should be well adapted to an upright posture. So why the continual whine about lower-back pain ?

Let us go back to the evolution of the upright posture . As the proto-hominid grows larger , the hands grasp higher branches than the feet to maintain balance .

The squat stretches .

As forests grow drier , the vertical distance between branches grow bigger . Proto-hominids adapt either by moving , growing smaller or growing larger . Growing larger has the penalty of increased lethal falls . The first larger hominids are safer on the the ground . Later ones face a back-pressure from the ones on the ground .

In any case , the upright posture evolves on bouncy boughs , where both feet are on the branch and hands are about eye-level . This leads to deeply genetically programmed muscle responses in the sidereal muscles of the back and abdomen . It is also tied to the sense of balance and rhythm .

Surviving humans are always musical .

Notice the selection for rhythm on the bouncy boughs : the natural musical rhythm that humans prefer are different from that of other animals . It should be possible to infer the make-up of the ancestral woods by the natural frequency .

The large ground-dwelling hominid evolves into a cursorial raptor . (He runs a lot , usually in circles .) They still have to squat (for birth and defecation) . The rough ground surface is a passable substitute for stimulation of the sidereal back-muscles.

What is interesting here , is that the size of the stomach doesn’t matter much . This is to be expected for mammals and original vegetarians .

So why the back-pain?

Simply , because modern humans do not walk enough on uneven surfaces . The sidereal back- and abdominal muscle reflexes are not stimulated enough (might not even be triggered) .

The wobble:

If you sit 8 hours a day on a static chair , these systems simply are not triggered . A short period of heavy exercise will not trigger them either . (Seen as fight-or-flight , not maintenance by homeostatic systems ) .

However , if you sit on a partially-inflated air-cushion , you wobble on it . After a while you balance and do not even notice it . But , with every breath and movement your sidereal muscles have to compensate . Exactly as on a bough .

Note that the cushion must be just inflated enough that your bum does not strike through . It must be a cushion , not a ring , because it has to be unstable . Your muscles must keep your posture stable .

If used on top of a normal chair , put one point of the cushion between your legs . Remember , the natural static posture is a variety of squat , with the knees apart and the heels below the hip-joints .

I’ve been doing this for about 3 years , and not only has my back problems ceased , but the tolerance has increased . In other words , I can carry weights now that would previously have rendered me hors-de-combat .

Varicose veins:From the above evolutionary viewpoint , one would expect that stimulus to the micro-musculature in the back and in the calves/feet to be related . The biochemical markers initiating the sidereal muscle tone in the back and abdomen should also affect the lower legs , since they stem from the same evolutionary roots . Note , these are not nervous impulses directly .

In other words , sitting on a partially inflated air-cushion should decrease varicose veins through activation of the micro-musculature.